Ruoqing Zhu

Ruoqing Zhu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a primary appointment in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. He also serves as an inaugural member of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, a Faculty Fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and an affiliated researcher with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Center for Genomic Diagnostics. His roles include PhD Program Director and Advisory Board member of Prenosis Inc.

Dr. Zhu holds a Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2013), an MA in Statistics from Bowling Green State University (2008), and dual B.S. degrees in Mathematics and Financial Engineering from Nanjing University (2006, 2005). His postdoctoral training was at Yale University’s Department of Biostatistics (2013–2015).

His research focuses on developing statistical methods for decision-making in personalized medicine and reinforcement learning, addressing challenges such as model interpretability, high-dimensional data, and distributional shifts. Key areas include uncertainty quantification, causal inference, and applications in bioinformatics, nutrition, and infectious diseases. He co-teaches courses at Carle Illinois, including Data Science Project and Foundations: Molecules to Populations, and contributes to interdisciplinary initiatives like the Personalized Nutrition Initiative.

His recent work emphasizes trustworthy AI in healthcare, including sepsis prediction tools, metabolomic analysis, and biomarker discovery. He is actively involved in translational research, bridging computational methods with clinical and public health applications.